Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC OOnt FRSCis a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Prince of Asturias Award for Literature, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, winning once, and has been a finalist for the Governor General's Award several times, winning twice. In 2001, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame. She is also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 November 1939
CityOttawa, Canada
CountryCanada
Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It's a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We're no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can't drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
Where to start is the problem, because nothing begins when it begins and nothing's over when it's over, and everything needs a preface: a preface, a postscript, a chart of simultaneous events.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
Those walls and bars are there for a reason,” said Crake. “Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases.” “Them?” “Nature and God.” “I thought you didn’t believe in God,” said Jimmy. “I don’t believe in Nature either,” said Crake. “Or not with a capital N.
He considers me also a little fragile because artistic. I need to be cared for, like a potted plant.
The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.
Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.
Heroes need monsters to establish their heroic credentials. You need something scary to overcome.
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.
The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.
As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.
They all disowned their parents long ago, the way you are supposed to
Put yourself in a different room, that's what the mind is for.